Can You Make a Living on YouTube

The top 500 brands on YouTube average 884,000 views a month, with 98,000 views per video and about 35,000 subscribers (top brands also average about 203,000 Twitter followers and 2.6. million Facebook likes.

The top 1,000 channels also average $23,000 in monthly ad revenue, and in another interesting number, it turns out that 350 social-media interactions are generated for each minute of video uploaded by these top channels.

Youtube Partners earn a cut of the CPM earned off the videos in their channel. Typically a Youtube Partner earns a $7 CPM. That means, for every 1000 an advertisement is shown on their channel, the Partner earns $7 (and Youtube takes the remaining ($18). Assuming a Partner’s video has one million views and every single viewer watched a pre-roll advertisement, the Partner would earn $7000 (1 million divided by 1000 * $7). That’s a very rough example. 

Meaning the top videos get linked, embedded, tweeted, etc., which is common sense, but still interesting to have put into an actual figure. But what does this translate into, in terms of revenue? Well, the top YouTube video ever, Gangnam Style (I know, I know) has over one billion views and counting (somewhere around 1.6 billion as of today) and generated about $870,000 dollars for Psy and his record label.

 Subscribers to these top 1,000 channels average 7.5 million views every month, 25 million comments  and 55 million ratings (thumbs up or down).

The reality, Can You Make a Living on YouTube becoming one of the top creators on YouTube takes consistency, a non-stop work schedule and a growing audience that have chosen to spend their valuable time watching your videos instead of the millions of others found on YouTube.